Silanus the Christian

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

This seemed, from a Christian point of view, to answer Scaurus’s objection, “‘Start afresh’ is more easily said than done.” The answer was—not my answer, but such an answer as I thought a Christian might make—“Yes, it is much more easily said than done. But the Son of God has authority both to say it and to give power to do it. He says, in effect, ‘Be thou able to start afresh,’ and the man is ‘able to start afresh’.”

Then, if Scaurus replied, “Prove this,” Paul came forward saying, “I at all events have received power to ‘start afresh.’ Even my enemies will attest what I have been, a persecutor of the Christians. Now I have been ‘forgiven’ by Him that has authority to forgive. The old things are passed away. Behold, they are become new.” And if Scaurus had said, “But have others been enabled to ‘start afresh’?” Paul would have answered, “Yes, multitudes, from the Euphrates to the Tiber. Do not trust me. Take a little journey from Tusculum into the poorest alleys of Rome, and judge for yourself.” Here I felt Paul would have been on such strong ground that Scaurus would have given way. “Paul”—he might have said—“is superstitious, and under hallucinations, but I must frankly confess he has the power to help people to ‘start afresh’.” That is just what I, too, felt. It was quite different from the feeling inspired in me by my own Teacher. When Epictetus said “Let bygones be bygones,” “Let us start afresh,” “Only begin and we shall see,” I felt, almost at once, that he was imagining impossibilities. When Paul said “There is a new creation,” I felt that he was describing not only a possibility but also a fact—a fact for himself and for multitudes of others; not indeed a fact for me, but, even for me, a possibility.

To return to Scaurus. “At last,” said he, “I came upon a definite precept to shew how perfection could be obtained. A rich young man asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. Jesus replies, ‘One thing is lacking to thee. Go, sell thy substance, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.’ Definite enough! But is it consistent with morality? Is it not entirely against Paul’s protest, ‘Though I give all my goods to the poor and have not love, I am nothing’?” Here Scaurus did not seem to me so fair as usual. For, knowing the gospels as well as he did, he was aware that Jesus did not enjoin this rule on all, for example, on Zacchæus. He laid down no rules. One man He bade go home, another He bade follow Him. Moreover Scaurus, who accused Epictetus of borrowing from Christ, knew that Epictetus inculcated poverty and unmarried life, not on all his disciples, but on any Cynic wishing to go as a missionary; and therefore he ought not to have inferred that Jesus inculcated poverty on all His disciples because He gave it as a precept in answer to the question, “What lack I yet?” For my part, although I was not at that time a Christian, yet when I read Mark’s words, “Jesus, looking upon him, loved (or embraced) him and said, One thing is lacking to thee”—I could understand that, for this particular man, the “one thing lacking” really might be that he should “sell all that he had,” and that Jesus, knowing this, gave the precept out of His great love. Scaurus called this “a definite precept to shew how perfection could be obtained.” But I found only Matthew saying “If thou wouldest be perfect.” Mark and Luke did not here use the word “perfect.”

Scaurus proceeded thus: “Little remains to be added in the way of precepts. There is a repetition of ‘whosoever desires to be great, he shall be your servant.’ And this is supported by the saying that ‘the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister.’ Then comes a most startling statement, ‘All things that ye pray and ask, believe that ye received them and they shall be unto you,’ and, ‘In the moment when ye stand praying⸺’ but I have spoken of that above. I really do not think that I have omitted anything of importance. Does not this amaze you?”

About the “startling statement” I will speak later on. But here I may say that Scaurus had omitted one short precept “Have salt in yourselves.” And this, to some extent, answered one or two of his objections. For, as I understood it, “Have salt in yourselves” corresponded to a saying of Epictetus, who bade us seek help from “the Logos within us.” On one occasion (noted above) Epictetus, rebuking one of our students for saying, “Give me some precepts to guide me,” replied, “Have you not the Logos to guide you?” Mark appeared to me to represent Christ as saying, “Take into your hearts the spirit of the Son, which the Son gives you. It will be the salt of life, life for you and life passing from you to others, purifying all your words and actions by imbuing your heart.” Elsewhere, also, Mark represented Christ as condemning the Pharisees (in the words of Isaiah) because, though they honoured God with their lips, their heart was far from Him and they “taught as doctrines the commandments of men.” Mark seemed to say “Obey the commandments of the Logos,” not “of men.” Still, I could not but admit that this brief metaphor, overlooked by Scaurus, might easily be overlooked or underrated by hundreds of other readers less careful and candid; and I was forced to sympathize—though not wholly to agree—with the outburst of disappointment which concluded his letter. “O that my old friend Plutarch had had the writing of the life of this Jewish prophet! Or that at least he had been at Mark’s elbow, to check him when he began descanting on extraneous matters and to remind him that his readers wanted to hear what he had to say about Christ, not about John the Baptist or Herod Antipas! Many of my friends think but poorly of Plutarch; but he would have been at all events infinitely superior to Mark. I do not wish to be hard upon the latter. The chariot of the gospel, so to speak, was already moving before he was harnessed to it, and he (not being a disciple of special insight or information) had to go the chariot’s way. Although his book hardly ever quotes prophecy it is based on prophecy and continually alludes to prophecy. It does not deal with Christ’s life as the ancient Jews dealt with the lives of Moses, Samuel, and David. Though it plunges into the midst of things like a book of the prophets—Jeremiah, for example, or Ezekiel—it does not give the words of the prophet in full, but runs off into all sorts of minor matters.

“You remember what Plutarch says about the importance of expression in biography. Mark occasionally attempts to represent a sort of expression—mostly by means of such phrases as ‘being moved with compassion,’ ‘being grieved,’ ‘looking steadfastly at him,’ ‘turning round,’ and so on. But the deeper sort of ‘expression,’ the prophet’s attitude towards God and man, towards the past and the future, towards the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of men—this he does not represent. Not at least consciously. Perhaps he does, sometimes, unconsciously, when he preserves Christ’s darker sayings where the later writers alter or omit them. For this, he deserves thanks. But, in spite of this, Mark’s gospel remains, me judice—regard being had to the greatness of the prophet whose life he is writing—the most inadequate of all the biographies I know.”

So far Scaurus. But his admission that Mark “sometimes preserves Christ’s darker sayings where the later writers alter or omit them” suggested to me that, in summing up, he felt that he might have passed over some of Mark’s unique traditions. And, as a fact, he had omitted “every one shall be salted with fire,” and three passages declaring that “all things are possible.” He also omitted the precept “Be at peace with one another.” Matthew and Luke omit all these, except that Matthew once has “all things are possible.”

This last tradition presents manifest difficulty. I have heard unbelievers scoff at it and ask whether “evil things” are “possible” for God. Moreover Scaurus himself urged on one occasion that not even God can undo the past. Later on, when I studied the gospels with more leisure, it seemed to me that, in saying “all things,” the Lord Jesus had constantly in view “the things of the invisible world” or “the things pertaining to the redemption of man.” So I found “all things” used in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, declaring that the Lord Jesus Christ was to “fashion anew the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.”

When I came to read the fourth gospel (called John’s), finding how often it supports Mark against Luke, I looked about for this word “possible” or “able” (for one and the same Greek adjective represents the two meanings). But John nowhere uses it. So I thought, “This then is an exception.” But I soon found that John expressed Mark’s saying, though in a different way. It is in a paradox, saying that the Son is “able to do nothing from himself.” This looks like a confession of not “being able.” But the sentence proceeds, “unless he sees the Father doing something”; and, after this, “The Father loveth the Son and sheweth him all things that He Himself is doing.” So the meaning really was, “The Son can do all that the Father is doing and wills the Son to do.” John did not therefore deny the power of the Son. He asserted it. But he disliked speaking of “power.” He avoided all words that mean “able,” “strong,” “powerful”—meaning “might” as distinct from “right.” He prefers “authority,” as when he says that the Son has “authority to lay down his life and to take it again.”

My conclusion was that Mark had recorded the actual words of Jesus, “all things are possible,” assuming that his readers, being instructed in the teaching of the apostles, would understand that the words had a spiritual meaning, “All things are put by the Father under the feet of the Son of man.” But sometimes, as in the Healing of the Lunatic, the meaning might be ambiguous, or the context might not be so given as to make the words clear. Hence Luke always omitted or altered them, as being obscure and likely to be misunderstood. John paraphrased and explained them. If these facts were correct, it followed that a great debt was due to Mark for preserving the difficult truth when there must have been a great temptation to omit it or to alter it into what was easy but not true. Scaurus gave some weight, but hardly weight enough (I thought) to this merit in Mark.